Met Office Heatwave “Records” Are Based on Junk Stations

Written by Paul Homewood on July 22, 2026. Posted in Current News

The Met Office are claiming that this year is the first time temperatures of 35C and higher have been recorded on six days. But the claims are a reflection of badly sited weather stations, not climate change.

For the last year or so, I have been warning about the increasing reliance of the Met Office on junk weather stations, which are so poorly sited that they can overestimate real temperatures by as much as five degrees. At the latest count, 88% of their 400 sites fall into this category.

Siting problems can include proximity to artificial heat sources, such as airport runways, roads, car parks, solar panels, buildings and traffic. Weather stations are also totally inappropriate in sun traps, such as in gardens surrounded by hedges and trees and walled gardens: the latter, of course, are purposely designed to create a warmer micro-climate.

Classifications are made according to World Meteorological Organisation standards. Class 1 sites are pristine, but temperatures at Class 3,4 and 5 ones can be 1C, 2C and 5C too high respectively.

Of the six days over 35C claimed by the Met Office, all were topped by readings at junk or near junk sites.

The most recent was last Friday, when 35.2C was recorded at Coton-in-the-Elms, a sleepy village in Derbyshire. Only one slight problem though, the thermometer is in a small enclosure surrounded on all sides by hedges and trees. The Met Office know it is a junk site, because they themselves have labelled it as Class 5.

We can be sure that the temperature on the other side of that hedge would have been much lower than 35.2C. Coton appears to be the only site over 35C that day. As the Met Office should not be using Class 5s for climatological purposes, that immediately knocks one day off the “record six days”

The other 35C days are no better. Four are at junk or near junk sites. Only 25^th May featured a Class 2 site, 35.1C at Kew Gardens; but subsequent photographs have shown Kew to be unsuitable due to poorly maintained heavy vegetation and the proximity of the Stevenson screen to a wooden fence.

In any event, it is not scientific to compare temperatures in one part of the country with others many miles away, which is the Guinness Book of Records stuff the Met Office are indulging in.

If you want to compare current temperatures with 1976, you must compare like for like. The long running Central England Temperature series, a high quality dataset based on rural sites, shows that there have been eight days over 30C so far this summer, which compares to nine by the same date in 1976.

In other words, both summers have been of similar heat intensity so far.

Of course it has been hot this year. But why does the Met Office resort to shoddy practices in order to exaggerate it?

source notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com